Sunday Magazine – August 18, 2019

S MAGAZINE ★ 18 AUGUST 2019 57

INTERVIEW

like my family so I was thrilled

when Jeffrey and I were reunited in

1999. Jody wasn’t keen on coming
      back, but now we have Carolyn
      Griffey as a permanent vocalist
      and the fans love her.
      Thirty-six years since this picture
      was taken I still feel like the
      same guy, still really happy to be
      performing, but I’m holding on to
      the last strand of hair. And I joke
      with Jeffrey that I’ve taken up
      body-popping because every
      morning I wake up and my body
      pops into place.”

Shalamar Gold is out now as a

three-CD set and single-disc vinyl.

with them on a local TV show.

There have been so many

highlights since then, like the time

we did two sold-out shows a night

across four nights at the Dominion

in London then added another

show at Wembley Arena. Or when

I got to do backing vocals for

Barbra Streisand on an album

she did with Quincy Jones and

also for Donna Summer on State

Of Independence.

When Jeffrey and Jody left the

band for various reasons after the

release of The Look, I was still

under contract so I did another

album with a new line-up and it

was fun. But Jeffrey and Jody were

LA, working in the women’s shoes

section of a department store, but

I always wanted to perform. I was

in a group touring Europe and

Asia, then I was kicking around for

a few months before I got the offer

to join Shalamar.

Jeffrey, who I’d met at a club

a couple of years earlier, called

up to say the lead singer had

quit the band in the middle of

a promotional tour and they

wanted me to take his place. That

was on a Friday, I flew out to New

Jersey on the Sunday to rehearse

the lip-sync and choreography

for Take That To The Bank, and

the next day I was performing

My favourite photograph by

Shalamar’s Howard Hewett

Howard, 63, recalls working on The Tube alongside Boy George when

his soul band was top of the charts Words by Simon Button

“THIS is what

I’d call an

‘iconic

situation’

since it’s me

with Boy

George on

The Tube in

1983. I don’t
      know who that is in the middle,
      probably a competition winner,
      but it sums up a magical time for
      Shalamar when so much great
      stuff was happening, especially in
      the UK. We’d had huge successes
      in the British charts with A Night
      To Remember and I Can Make You
      Feel Good and the Friends album
      the previous year and the single
      that I’m holding up, Dead Giveaway
      from the follow-up album The Look,
      had just gone top 10.
      I got to meet all these icons like
      George Michael from Wham! and
      I remember Boy George being a
      really nice guy. He was bigger than
      I’d expected, a really tall guy, and
      not someone you’d mess with, but
      he was a cool cat.
      Britain really embraced us after
      they saw Jeffrey Daniel doing the
      moonwalk, or the backslide as it
      was called back then, on Top Of
      The Pops when we first performed
      A Night To Remember on the show.
      He’d been doing his body-popping
      thing for a couple of years in our
      live shows, where Jody Watley and
      I would pull this imaginary rope
      and he’d glide across the stage,
      but you guys had never seen
      anything like it before and the
      next day the single’s sales went
      through the roof.
      I’d been singing since I was 10
      years old. I had one nine-to-five
      when I first moved from Ohio to

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